Editing Selectricity/John Dong UROP Proposal (section)

== Introduction ==

I am writing to propose a project `Enhancement and Extension Of Selectricity Voting System` for the summer in the MIT Media Lab, working with Chris Csikszentmihályi and Benjamin Mako Hill. This project involves extending a free/open source software--''Selectricity''--a voting system for every day decision-making. While most voting projects are geared toward improving the process of government decision-making, ''Selectricity'' is a new project which tries to apply the best of government based election technology toward everyday decisions. These decision might be as simple as, "Where should we go to dinner?" or as complex as, "Who should be officers of a campus club?". Selectricity's goals is to employ the most appropriate algorithms to help users make the best choices and emphasizes preferential decision-making, cryptographic means of voter verifiability, and algorithmically complex election methods which would be difficult without software.

''Selectricity'' is built on an existing election methods library written at the Media Lab and exists today as a Ruby on Rails web application. While it is primarily web based, the software also provides a prototype SMS interface accessible from mobile phones. The system is built entirely on free/open source software and will be distributed completely under the GNU GPL. Additionally, parts of the software are already deployed and in active use. ''Selectricity'' is expected to be used widely in the near future.

A prototype version of the software, HyperChad, is available online at: http://hyperchad.media.mit.edu